Suicide Forest (8 page)

Then I saw Neil behind me. He was dumping
his tent from its nylon sack. Out fell a polyester flysheet, metal
poles, several stakes, and guy ropes.

Guy ropes!

There were four of them, each five or six
feet in lengths.

“Yes, Neil!” I said.

“We tie them together,” he said, “I reckon
we can reach her easy.”

“Mel! We have rope!” I shouted. “We’ll toss
it down in a minute!”

Neil was laying the ends of two ropes
parallel to each other.

“The knot has to be strong,” I said, wishing
I knew something about knot tying.

“I know what I’m bloody doing.”

I watched as he coiled the working end of
one rope twice around the second rope, passing it through the
inside of the coils. He repeated this with the second rope in the
opposite direction. Then he pulled the free ends to tighten the
knots.

“That’s it?” I said skeptically. It looked
secure, but it seemed too simple.

“A double fisherman’s. It’s the best way to
tie two ropes together.”

He attached the third and fourth segments,
stood, and held up the finished length proudly.

“Can you tie the end of it in a loop?” I
asked.

“Is there enough rope?”

“I think so. If not, we’ll untie it.”

Neil secured the end in a large bowline
knot, then we returned to the hole.

Tomo was kneeling at the edge. He glanced at
the rope and said, “Neil, man, you fucking James Bond.”

“Mel!” I called. “We’re going to toss down a
rope. You ready?”

“Yes!”

Neil passed me the rope. “There’s nothing
close enough to anchor it to.”

I nodded and fed out the slack.

“Can you reach it, Mel?”

“I have it!”

“Slide the loop over your head and under
your arms.”

“Is this going to work?”

“One hundred percent.”

The best method would be for her to lean
back until she was perpendicular with the wall and rappel upward
like a rock climber. But I knew she would never attempt this. Also,
if she fell, she would tumble head over heels past the ledge all
the way to the bottom, however deep that was.

On the other hand, if Tomo, Neil, and I
simply pulled her up hand over hand like you pull a fish out of a
hole in the ice, and something catastrophic happened such as the
rope breaking, she would hopefully slide back down the wall and
land on the ledge again.

This was my thinking anyway.

“You ready, Mel?” I said.

“I don’t think I can do this!”

“You have to. It’s the only way out. Look up
at the light. It’s not far. It’s only fifteen feet or so.”

“I can’t do this!”

“Yes, you can. We’ll be pulling you, so you
just have to hold on.”

“What if I fall?”

“You won’t. Just hold on tight.”

“What if it snaps?”

“It won’t. It’s strong. I promise you. Don’t
think about that. You ready?”

She didn’t answer.

“Mel?”

“Yeah.”

“You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t let go, no matter what.”

“Okay!”

I looked over my shoulder at Neil and Tomo.
Like me, they both had their right arm twisted around the length of
rope for extra traction.

We heaved while stepping backward. One step,
then another, then another. Mel was incredibly heavy. The
polyethylene rope dug into my palms, but I ignored the pain.

It was working
.

I pictured Mel, peering at the circle of
light overhead, her body swinging back and forth as she inched
upward, bouncing against the rock face.

If the rope snapped, or the knots came
loose…

I didn’t let myself think of that.

Then, what seemed like a very short time
later, Mel’s arms appeared over the lip of the crevice, then her
head. Her face was a mask of agony and grit. She was so focused she
didn’t glance at us. She was squirming, kicking with her legs.

Then she flopped forward on solid ground.
She scrambled the rest of the way to us, as if she feared something
was about to leap from the hole and drag her back down. She
collided into me, gripping me in a fierce hug, and we collapsed
together, panting with exertion.

We
remained locked
in an embrace for several minutes as our heartbeats returned to
normal and our nerves settled down. I enjoyed the warmth of Mel’s
body against mine, the softness of it. I breathed in the fresh,
lemon-scent of her hair.

“Thank you,” she whispered into my neck.

“It’s okay,” I said, stroking her back
reassuringly.

“I was so scared.”

“It’s okay.”

When I couldn’t ignore the stinging in my
hands any longer, I kissed Mel on the forehead, shifted out from
beneath her, and sat up. The rope had left angry red furrows across
both palms. Thankfully, the skin hadn’t torn, but I wouldn’t be
surprised if it began to blister at some point. I lifted my shirt.
There were a couple thin cuts, but that was all. I barely felt
them.

I turned my attention to Mel, who was still
lying down, eyes closed.

“You good?” I said, squeezing her thigh.

She opened her eyes and nodded.

“You didn’t twist your ankle or
anything?”

“I don’t think so.” She glanced at the
crevice. “I didn’t even see it.”

“I didn’t either,” I said. “I must have
walked straight past it.”

“You were going so fast. I was just trying
to keep up.”

“I know, I…” I shrugged, recalling the pull
I’d felt.

“How deep do you think it is?”

“Not that deep,” I lied.

“I dropped my phone.”

“Down the hole?”

“When you were pulling me out. It fell from
my pocket. I think I heard it land on the ledge below me.”

“You want to go get it?” I said lightly.

“Funny.”

“We’ll get you a new one in Tokyo. It’s
about time you updated anyway.”

Neil cleared his throat. “So what do you
reckon we do now?” he asked, as he cleaned the lenses of his
glasses with his shirt. “Keep going or head back.”

“Keep going, man,” Tomo said, jumping to his
feet. “Why not?”

“Because Mel just went through a bit of an
ordeal, Tomo. Perhaps she doesn’t want to continue.”

We all looked at her.

“Let’s keep going,” she said. “I actually
feel pretty good.”

In a strange way I did too. Alive and
invigorated. Maybe it was adrenaline, but I thought it was more
than that. We had been challenged, and we not only triumphed, we
did so with a cool head and as a team. Really, with Mel now safe, I
felt more proud than anything of our accomplishment.

Suicide Forest zero; Team Tokyo one.

“You heard her,” I said. “Let’s move.”

Mel
and I walked
side by side holding hands, keeping a careful eye on the ground for
anymore crevices. Less than five minutes later we spotted a second
ribbon. It was blue and continued parallel to the white one for a
bit before gradually angling off to the left. I wondered which had
been laid down first and whether the person who’d come second would
have been comforted by the sight of another ribbon. To know you
were in a place where others killed themselves as well. Where it
was somewhat acceptable to kill yourself. Where you could disappear
and not burden family and friends, who otherwise would have to
identify your body at the morgue, arrange a funeral, attend the
funeral.

The perfect place to die
.

The longer I was in Aokigahara, the more I
believed this statement to be true. Despite the pervasive
atmosphere of death and struggle and sadness, you felt cocooned
here, isolated from the outside world. And wasn’t this exactly what
someone contemplating suicide would want? It certainly seemed like
a more suitable place to spend your last time on earth than, say,
the Golden Gate Bridge, with motorists screaming past, some
stopping to stare, some to play hero, as you scaled the suicide
barrier.

I was by no means an expert on suicide, but
I could relate to the state of mind of someone contemplating it
because I had contemplated it myself in the days after Gary died.
That had been a shitty time, the worst in my life, and often I
would wonder how I was going to get through the next day, or the
next week. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that Gary had
forfeited: his family, his career, his future. He’d had everything
to look forward to. Perhaps this, in some way, was why I felt it
should have been me instead. Gary was the star; I was the
understudy. I was the disposable of the two of us. Sometimes I
wondered if my parents felt this way as well. Parents will always
tell you they don’t have a favorite child, but I don’t know if I
believe that. How could they not have favored Gary over me? How
could anyone not have? He was—Gary.

I’d say the worst of the depression—the
suicide-thinking depression—lasted one month, maybe two. During
this time I rarely left the apartment except to attend my classes.
I had wanted to be by myself. I had wanted nothing to do with the
outside world.

I had wanted a place like Aokigahara, a
place where I could be left alone and forgotten.

Nevertheless, I’ve always been a pragmatist,
and I also understood that my death wouldn’t bring Gary back and,
just as those signs we’d passed earlier had insinuated, it would
only cause my family and friends more pain.

Unfortunately, I had witnessed this domino
effect firsthand. It occurred back when I was in high school. On a
Saturday afternoon during summer break six guys I knew had crammed
into a car with five seatbelts and were driving to see a Pearl Jam
concert. Barry “Weasel” Mitchell was behind the wheel. He was
speeding. My close friend Chris, who was in the car, told me he’d
wanted him to slow down, but he’d been too timid to say anything.
Everyone else was fine with the speed, he figured he could be too.
They were passing around a two-foot-tall bong, hot-boxing the car.
When the bong came to Weasel, he told his little brother Stevie,
who was in shotgun, to hold the steering wheel straight while he
took a hit. At this point Chris no longer wanted them to slow down,
he wanted them to stop, so he could get out, and he was just
working himself up to say something when the car drifted onto the
gravel shoulder of the road. Weasel shoved the bong aside and
yanked the steering wheel to the left. He overcompensated. The car
knifed across the two-lane blacktop. He swung the wheel back the
other way. Again he overcompensated. Suddenly the vehicle took on a
life of its own, swerving back and forth, back and forth, out of
control. Inevitably it launched off the highway, nosed into the
shallow culvert, shot back out, and crashed headlong into a tree a
little past Blackhawk Airfield.

This was as much as Chris remembered because
he was knocked unconscious. Newspapers and the gossip that filtered
through our school filled in the gaps for me. A passing motorist
called in the accident. The guy who didn’t have his seatbelt on—the
sixth passenger, Anthony Mainardi—was launched through the
windshield, but miraculously he was the least injured, suffering
only lacerations to his face and some bruising. The other injuries
ranged from Kenny Baker needing facial reconstruction surgery to
Tom Reynolds suffering several broken ribs and swallowing half his
teeth. Stevie, who was two years younger than everyone else, was
the sole fatality. The collision with the tree shoved the engine
block back several feet, crushing him in his seat. Apparently his
guts were squeezed out of him, similar to what happens to roadkill.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Two weeks after Weasel was charged with
vehicular homicide by intoxication, he stuffed some socks in the
exhaust pipe of his parents’ remaining vehicle, climbed in behind
the wheel, started the engine, and got fatally high on carbon
monoxide poisoning. His mother had a nervous breakdown shortly
after and was checked into Badger Prairie Health Care Center (which
in the nineteenth century had been called the Dane County Asylum
for the Criminally Insane), where she failed to kill herself by
slitting her wrists but succeeded by jumping from an eighth-floor
window. The day after she was buried Weasel’s father, a police
detective, took his service revolver and blew his brains out—

“Ah, shit,” I heard Tomo say, tugging me
back to the present.

Some two dozen feet ahead of us was a glade
created when a large tree fell over and knocked down several
smaller ones. The white ribbon ended there.

“It’s a dead end,” I stated.

“Looks like it,” Neil said.

As the meaning of this sank in,
disappointment welled inside me. We wouldn’t be calling John Scott
and the Israelis to come meet us. We would have to walk all the way
back to the intertwined trees. And if the others hadn’t found
anything either, then this entire excursion would be a bust.

A white ribbon, that was all.

When we stepped into the clearing, I looked
up. It was the first time I had seen the sky clearly since we’d
started down the secondary trail. It was low and gray and
foreboding. I continued forward, my eyes still raised, my hands
out, feeling for raindrops, when Mel hissed at me to stop.

I froze, thinking that maybe I was about to
step into an unseen hole. But, no, I was on solid ground. Frowning,
I turned toward her, my eyes sweeping the forest floor, and I saw
what she had seen. My heart locked up in my chest, and I went cold
all over.

I was standing in the middle of a
gravesite.

To
the right of me,
strewn on the ground, were a number of innocuous items that
wouldn’t have been out of place in anyone’s home. But here, in the
middle of the forest—
this
forest—they were a ghastly sight.
There was an old, torn umbrella. A ruined handbag, covered with
dirt and dead leaves. A pack of Seven Stars cigarettes. An empty
bottle of Smirnoff vodka. A broken mirror, a toothbrush, a
hairbrush, a tube of lipstick.